UPDATE: As I had cautioned, The Mirror indeed had its "facts" muddled. According to this October article in Vice, the photos seen here are actually from the woods around the University of Virginia’s Mountain Lake Biological Station. No idea if the fellow was actually tripping or thought he was a Siberian tiger. Shame, as the below story is quite delightful.

Original uncorrected post:

This gentleman from Liberec, Czech Republic was reportedly tripping on LSD to combat depression when he began to hallucinate that he was a Siberian tiger. He then stripped naked and pursued imaginary prey for miles along the Czech-Poland border where he was spotted on trailcams. According to the Mirror, "police said that, because the man did not have any drugs with him, he was only fined and will not face any further charges."

If this story is true, I hope the fellow had fun and that the experience alleviated his depression.

]]>

UPDATE: As I had cautioned, The Mirror indeed had its "facts" muddled. According to this October article in Vice, the photos seen here are actually from the woods around the University of Virginia’s Mountain Lake Biological Station. No idea if the fellow was actually tripping or thought he was a Siberian tiger. Shame, as the below story is quite delightful.

Original uncorrected post:

This gentleman from Liberec, Czech Republic was reportedly tripping on LSD to combat depression when he began to hallucinate that he was a Siberian tiger. He then stripped naked and pursued imaginary prey for miles along the Czech-Poland border where he was spotted on trailcams. According to the Mirror, "police said that, because the man did not have any drugs with him, he was only fined and will not face any further charges."

If this story is true, I hope the fellow had fun and that the experience alleviated his depression.

Who were we? How did we live, and what did it look like? The vast archive of castoff slides captures, in vivid colors, images of the American family at midcentury. But the stories that go with the pictures are most often lost, and we’re left to create our own, and reflect on millions of conscious decisions to untie the knot of memory.

Who were we? How did we live, and what did it look like? The vast archive of castoff slides captures, in vivid colors, images of the American family at midcentury. But the stories that go with the pictures are most often lost, and we’re left to create our own, and reflect on millions of conscious decisions to untie the knot of memory.

Like rainbows, fogbows are caused by sunglight reflecting off water drops. However, as NASA explains:

The fog itself is not confined to an arch -- the fog is mostly transparent but relatively uniform.The fogbow shape is created by those drops with the best angle to divert sunlight to the observer. The fogbow's relative lack of colors are caused by the relatively smaller water drops. The drops active above are so small that the quantum mechanical wavelength of light becomes important and smears out colors that would be created by larger rainbow water drops acting like small prisms reflecting sunlight.

Like rainbows, fogbows are caused by sunglight reflecting off water drops. However, as NASA explains:

The fog itself is not confined to an arch -- the fog is mostly transparent but relatively uniform.The fogbow shape is created by those drops with the best angle to divert sunlight to the observer. The fogbow's relative lack of colors are caused by the relatively smaller water drops. The drops active above are so small that the quantum mechanical wavelength of light becomes important and smears out colors that would be created by larger rainbow water drops acting like small prisms reflecting sunlight.

Kansas Secretary of State and noted xenophobe Kris Kobach, who is in line to run Trump's DHS, was photographed by the AP yesterday at the Trump National Golf Club Bedminster clubhouse holding the secret 100-day plan for the Trump DHS. By blowing the photo up, we're able to learn an awful lot about what's in the cards.
(more…)

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Kansas Secretary of State and noted xenophobe Kris Kobach, who is in line to run Trump's DHS, was photographed by the AP yesterday at the Trump National Golf Club Bedminster clubhouse holding the secret 100-day plan for the Trump DHS. By blowing the photo up, we're able to learn an awful lot about what's in the cards.
(more…)

Peterborough, England photographer Chris Porsz's Reunions photo series and book presents his remarkable street snapshots of myriad characters taken in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s juxtapozed with those same individuals at the location of the original photographs. See more: Reunions

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Peterborough, England photographer Chris Porsz's Reunions photo series and book presents his remarkable street snapshots of myriad characters taken in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s juxtapozed with those same individuals at the location of the original photographs. See more: Reunions

Color slides were once the state of the art in family photography -- vibrant, immersive, ubiquitous. So ubiquitous, in fact, that millions, maybe billions of them survive. A conversation with midcentury pop culture expert Charles Phoenix: What can we learn from the vast shadow world of abandoned slides about the way we used to live in our homes?

Color slides were once the state of the art in family photography -- vibrant, immersive, ubiquitous. So ubiquitous, in fact, that millions, maybe billions of them survive. A conversation with midcentury pop culture expert Charles Phoenix: What can we learn from the vast shadow world of abandoned slides about the way we used to live in our homes?

Below, a young grizzly bear plays with two GoPro cameras mounted on a pontoon floating in the clear water of the Knight Inlet on the British Columbia Coast.

"The idea was to film bears diving for fish in 2-meter deep pools," wrote Newsflare member kitchinsink, who uploaded the video. "If I was in the pool they wouldn't come and dive so I needed a camera that would float 'inconspicuously!'"

Below, a young grizzly bear plays with two GoPro cameras mounted on a pontoon floating in the clear water of the Knight Inlet on the British Columbia Coast.

"The idea was to film bears diving for fish in 2-meter deep pools," wrote Newsflare member kitchinsink, who uploaded the video. "If I was in the pool they wouldn't come and dive so I needed a camera that would float 'inconspicuously!'"

For the last four years, the Rocketry Organization of California (ROC), a club for hardcore model rocket geeks, has hosted the Tripoli Rocketry Association's LDRS (Large, Dangerous Rocket Ships) launch at the Lucerne Dry Lake Bed. These aren't the small Estes rockets you can launch on your local baseball field but rather large High Powered Rockets propelled by engines rated "G" or higher. Photographer Sean Lemoine documented the spectacular scene in a series of photos that made me wish even more that I was there for lift off.

For the last four years, the Rocketry Organization of California (ROC), a club for hardcore model rocket geeks, has hosted the Tripoli Rocketry Association's LDRS (Large, Dangerous Rocket Ships) launch at the Lucerne Dry Lake Bed. These aren't the small Estes rockets you can launch on your local baseball field but rather large High Powered Rockets propelled by engines rated "G" or higher. Photographer Sean Lemoine documented the spectacular scene in a series of photos that made me wish even more that I was there for lift off.

http://boingboing.net/2016/11/10/fantastic-selfies-from-1920.html/feed5493462Birdie: a GoPro parachute case for aerial photographyhttp://boingboing.net/2016/11/10/birdie-a-gopro-parachute-case.html
http://boingboing.net/2016/11/10/birdie-a-gopro-parachute-case.html#commentsThu, 10 Nov 2016 16:05:11 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=493445The Birdie is a case for GoPro cameras that resembles a badminton shuttlecock and enables you to toss your camera into the air for aerial photography. (I presume you could drop it as well, but I'd imagine any real altitude would risk catastrophic failure.) The Birdie also floats.

The Birdie is a case for GoPro cameras that resembles a badminton shuttlecock and enables you to toss your camera into the air for aerial photography. (I presume you could drop it as well, but I'd imagine any real altitude would risk catastrophic failure.) The Birdie also floats.

I'd like for you to meet one of my favorite people in the whole world. He's a private guy and though he's okay with my writing this post, he'd rather I kept his identity a secret for now. He calls himself The Toadman. But I should warn you, what you are about to read isn't what you'd expect. He doesn't lick toads for fun, eat amphibians or live under a bridge. He simply loves toads more than anything in the world and what he does in his free time proves it.

If you ever meet The Toadman, he'll seem just like anyone else in the Motor City. He'll probably talk about Michigan State University, the Detroit Tigers and how great it is to live in his hometown of Clawson. But what you won't get right out of the gate is what I call his "green side". That's the side of him that's comfortable discussing his life-long passion.

Since we were kids, The Toadman has been obsessed with frogs and toads. The day I got my drivers license he talked me into traveling 20 miles north to a swampy area because "that's where they have the best ones". I know it sounds strange, but just as a bird watcher is able to detect the presence of certain birds by how they chirp, The Toadman is able to do the same with toads. It's uncanny really.

Did I mention that for the past 2 decades he's lived with toads and sometimes sets up professional photo shoots with them? Just look at the size of his favorite googly eyed friend, Toad Ramsey. That portrait is ridiculously huge!

Sadly, Toad Ramsey is no longer with us (God rest his frog soul). He was named after a baseball player from the 1880's who became famous for inventing the knuckle curve ball. It seemed that Thomas H. "Toad" Ramsey had severed the tendon in the index finger of his pitching hand and there was no way for it to apply pressure to the ball from that finger when thrown. When other pitchers saw his throws curve the way they did, they deconstructed his grip and the technique lives on to this very day.

The Youngstown Vindicator described his pitches on January 6, 1923:

“The ball would leave the hand and go on a straight line to the plate, then suddenly shoot down. Ramsey’s curve was pronounced by experts to be the perfect demonstration of rotating a sphere."

In 1888 the Toad Ramsey baseball card became available and my friend has built a little house for the one that he owns. He explained that the card isn't especially valuable and though he did it to protect it from direct sunlight, it was also because toads are mostly nocturnal.

As you can see, Toad Ramsey will live safe and sound forever under a gigantic portrait of himself.

We should all be so lucky.

Earlier this year, The Toadman attempted to contact the spirit of Toad Ramsey through a Ouija board. What he found was that Mr. Ramsey doesn't like being called "Toad" at all. He'd rather be called by his given name, Tom.

I'm sure you're glad that's straightened out.

In 2003, The Toadman's Fantasy baseball team (named The Clawson Toads) won the World Championship title besting more than 200,000 teams in the ESPN's Baseball Challenge. That year everyone in town got a Clawson Toads baseball shirt to celebrate.

The Toadman followed CNN trucks around town while wearing his shirt in hopes of getting some well deserved airtime. And at 3:28 PM, on December, 12th 2003, my friend hit 4.5 seconds of pay dirt.

This footage became especially important when he found himself in a battle with editors of Wikipedia. It seemed they didn't think the Clawson Toads were important enough to have their own article. After 2 years of tireless battling, The Toadman's wikipedia page was taken down and the sleepy city of Clawson, Michigan has never been the same.

But life goes on for The Toadman and he is currently working on his will that states, "Upon my death, I leave everything I own to the Clawson City school district as long as Clawson High School changes their mascot from whatever it is to a toad".

And that seems fair to me.

Go Toads!

]]>

I'd like for you to meet one of my favorite people in the whole world. He's a private guy and though he's okay with my writing this post, he'd rather I kept his identity a secret for now. He calls himself The Toadman. But I should warn you, what you are about to read isn't what you'd expect. He doesn't lick toads for fun, eat amphibians or live under a bridge. He simply loves toads more than anything in the world and what he does in his free time proves it.

If you ever meet The Toadman, he'll seem just like anyone else in the Motor City. He'll probably talk about Michigan State University, the Detroit Tigers and how great it is to live in his hometown of Clawson. But what you won't get right out of the gate is what I call his "green side". That's the side of him that's comfortable discussing his life-long passion.

Since we were kids, The Toadman has been obsessed with frogs and toads. The day I got my drivers license he talked me into traveling 20 miles north to a swampy area because "that's where they have the best ones". I know it sounds strange, but just as a bird watcher is able to detect the presence of certain birds by how they chirp, The Toadman is able to do the same with toads. It's uncanny really.

Did I mention that for the past 2 decades he's lived with toads and sometimes sets up professional photo shoots with them? Just look at the size of his favorite googly eyed friend, Toad Ramsey. That portrait is ridiculously huge!

Sadly, Toad Ramsey is no longer with us (God rest his frog soul). He was named after a baseball player from the 1880's who became famous for inventing the knuckle curve ball. It seemed that Thomas H. "Toad" Ramsey had severed the tendon in the index finger of his pitching hand and there was no way for it to apply pressure to the ball from that finger when thrown. When other pitchers saw his throws curve the way they did, they deconstructed his grip and the technique lives on to this very day.

The Youngstown Vindicator described his pitches on January 6, 1923:

“The ball would leave the hand and go on a straight line to the plate, then suddenly shoot down. Ramsey’s curve was pronounced by experts to be the perfect demonstration of rotating a sphere."

In 1888 the Toad Ramsey baseball card became available and my friend has built a little house for the one that he owns. He explained that the card isn't especially valuable and though he did it to protect it from direct sunlight, it was also because toads are mostly nocturnal.

As you can see, Toad Ramsey will live safe and sound forever under a gigantic portrait of himself.

We should all be so lucky.

Earlier this year, The Toadman attempted to contact the spirit of Toad Ramsey through a Ouija board. What he found was that Mr. Ramsey doesn't like being called "Toad" at all. He'd rather be called by his given name, Tom.

I'm sure you're glad that's straightened out.

In 2003, The Toadman's Fantasy baseball team (named The Clawson Toads) won the World Championship title besting more than 200,000 teams in the ESPN's Baseball Challenge. That year everyone in town got a Clawson Toads baseball shirt to celebrate.

The Toadman followed CNN trucks around town while wearing his shirt in hopes of getting some well deserved airtime. And at 3:28 PM, on December, 12th 2003, my friend hit 4.5 seconds of pay dirt.

This footage became especially important when he found himself in a battle with editors of Wikipedia. It seemed they didn't think the Clawson Toads were important enough to have their own article. After 2 years of tireless battling, The Toadman's wikipedia page was taken down and the sleepy city of Clawson, Michigan has never been the same.

But life goes on for The Toadman and he is currently working on his will that states, "Upon my death, I leave everything I own to the Clawson City school district as long as Clawson High School changes their mascot from whatever it is to a toad".

Are you jonesing for a dose of optimism and possibility? In the mood to contemplate the cosmos? Want to experience a musical message for extraterrestrials the way it was meant to be played? The Voyager Golden Record: 40th Anniversary Edition, a project I launched with Timothy Daly and Lawrence Azerrad, is a lavish vinyl box set containing the contents of the phonograph record launched into space in 1977 and now 13 billion miles from Earth.

Our Kickstarter ends at 8pm PDT tonight (Thursday). Once we fulfill the rewards from this campaign, we'll never produce this deluxe 40th Anniversary Edition again.

We are so thankful enthusiasm and excitement about our project and the incredible Voyager interstellar mission. The curiosity and support is infectious. We're deeply grateful that a project that has been on our minds for so long has resonated with so many people around the world. Ad astra!

And here's an excerpt from an interview with me about the project, from The Vinyl Factory:

Ultimately it was a utopian vision for Earth as much as an actual attempt to communicate with extra terrestrials… Wasn’t it?

Yeah I think the idea is that if there is a civilisation that is intelligent enough to actually intercept it, they’ll be able to follow the instructions on how to play it. And I think that’s true. In some ways though, it doesn’t even really matter if it’s ever played or not by an extra-terrestrial civilisation.

And I firmly believe this, it was a gift to the cosmos but it was also a gift to humanity. And Linda Salzman Sagan, who was on the original committee, said something along the lines of there being two audiences, there was the extra-terrestrial audience and then there was the audience of the people on Earth. And that’s what’s exciting to us...

And the label you’ve set up for this end is Ozma Records…

It’s worth mentioning the name. So Ozma is the Princess of Oz from the Wizard of Oz books. That’s the first reference. But the second reference is connected to Frank Drake, who is a pioneer in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, and was on the Voyager Golden Record committee. In fact he’s the one who came up with the idea of sending a phonograph record. In the 1960s he launched one of the first scientific efforts to search for extraterrestrial intelligence using radio-telescopes and that was called Project Ozma, named after Princess Ozma. So we wanted to honour him and use that name. Our hope is to release future records that lie at the intersection of science and art and music too, that also instil a sense of wonder.

Are you jonesing for a dose of optimism and possibility? In the mood to contemplate the cosmos? Want to experience a musical message for extraterrestrials the way it was meant to be played? The Voyager Golden Record: 40th Anniversary Edition, a project I launched with Timothy Daly and Lawrence Azerrad, is a lavish vinyl box set containing the contents of the phonograph record launched into space in 1977 and now 13 billion miles from Earth.

Our Kickstarter ends at 8pm PDT tonight (Thursday). Once we fulfill the rewards from this campaign, we'll never produce this deluxe 40th Anniversary Edition again.

We are so thankful enthusiasm and excitement about our project and the incredible Voyager interstellar mission. The curiosity and support is infectious. We're deeply grateful that a project that has been on our minds for so long has resonated with so many people around the world. Ad astra!

And here's an excerpt from an interview with me about the project, from The Vinyl Factory:

Ultimately it was a utopian vision for Earth as much as an actual attempt to communicate with extra terrestrials… Wasn’t it?

Yeah I think the idea is that if there is a civilisation that is intelligent enough to actually intercept it, they’ll be able to follow the instructions on how to play it. And I think that’s true. In some ways though, it doesn’t even really matter if it’s ever played or not by an extra-terrestrial civilisation.

And I firmly believe this, it was a gift to the cosmos but it was also a gift to humanity. And Linda Salzman Sagan, who was on the original committee, said something along the lines of there being two audiences, there was the extra-terrestrial audience and then there was the audience of the people on Earth. And that’s what’s exciting to us...

And the label you’ve set up for this end is Ozma Records…

It’s worth mentioning the name. So Ozma is the Princess of Oz from the Wizard of Oz books. That’s the first reference. But the second reference is connected to Frank Drake, who is a pioneer in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, and was on the Voyager Golden Record committee. In fact he’s the one who came up with the idea of sending a phonograph record. In the 1960s he launched one of the first scientific efforts to search for extraterrestrial intelligence using radio-telescopes and that was called Project Ozma, named after Princess Ozma. So we wanted to honour him and use that name. Our hope is to release future records that lie at the intersection of science and art and music too, that also instil a sense of wonder.

http://boingboing.net/2016/10/20/last-call-for-the-voyager-gold.html/feed3489763Vintage snapshots of people with their record albumshttp://boingboing.net/2016/10/19/489459.html
http://boingboing.net/2016/10/19/489459.html#commentsWed, 19 Oct 2016 16:21:47 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=489459

Esteemed vernacular photography collector Robert Jackson shares his favorite snapshots of people with their record albums. According to Mashable, "These faded prints and Polaroids recall a time when a new record was a physical work of art to be admired and cherished." I got news for you: That time is still now.

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Esteemed vernacular photography collector Robert Jackson shares his favorite snapshots of people with their record albums. According to Mashable, "These faded prints and Polaroids recall a time when a new record was a physical work of art to be admired and cherished." I got news for you: That time is still now.

Artist Mike Kelley creates "Airportraits" of the world's airports by photographing all the planes that take off on a given day, then compositing them together into a kind of time-lapse of a day's worth of flights, which presents an instantly comprehensible way of comparing the different services; they're available as stunning prints. (via Kottke)
(more…)

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Artist Mike Kelley creates "Airportraits" of the world's airports by photographing all the planes that take off on a given day, then compositing them together into a kind of time-lapse of a day's worth of flights, which presents an instantly comprehensible way of comparing the different services; they're available as stunning prints. (via Kottke)
(more…)

There's nothing wrong with "big noses, weak chins, and sloping foreheads" but if you want to adjust your selfies to make them less distorted, give this a try. It's based on a research project called "Perspective-aware Manipulation of Portrait Photos" by Ohad Fried, Eli Shechtman, Dan B Goldman, and Adam Finkelstein. And was created by Brian McSwiggen and John Morone, advised by Ohad Fried and Adam Finkelstein.

paper introduces a method to modify the apparent relative pose and distance between camera and subject given a single portrait photo. Our approach fits a full perspective camera and a parametric 3D head model to the portrait, and then builds a 2D warp in the image plane to approximate the effect of a desired change in 3D. We show that this model is capable of correcting objectionable artifacts such as the large noses sometimes seen in "selfies," or to deliberately bring a distant camera closer to the subject. This framework can also be used to re-pose the subject, as well as to create stereo pairs from an input portrait. We show convincing results on both an existing dataset as well as a new dataset we captured to validate our method.

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There's nothing wrong with "big noses, weak chins, and sloping foreheads" but if you want to adjust your selfies to make them less distorted, give this a try. It's based on a research project called "Perspective-aware Manipulation of Portrait Photos" by Ohad Fried, Eli Shechtman, Dan B Goldman, and Adam Finkelstein. And was created by Brian McSwiggen and John Morone, advised by Ohad Fried and Adam Finkelstein.

paper introduces a method to modify the apparent relative pose and distance between camera and subject given a single portrait photo. Our approach fits a full perspective camera and a parametric 3D head model to the portrait, and then builds a 2D warp in the image plane to approximate the effect of a desired change in 3D. We show that this model is capable of correcting objectionable artifacts such as the large noses sometimes seen in "selfies," or to deliberately bring a distant camera closer to the subject. This framework can also be used to re-pose the subject, as well as to create stereo pairs from an input portrait. We show convincing results on both an existing dataset as well as a new dataset we captured to validate our method.

]]>http://boingboing.net/2016/10/13/how-to-make-selfies-look-like.html/feed20488396New book explores abandoned asylumshttp://boingboing.net/2016/10/11/new-book-explores-abandoned-as.html
http://boingboing.net/2016/10/11/new-book-explores-abandoned-as.html#commentsTue, 11 Oct 2016 11:30:33 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=487782Photographer Matt Van der Velde traveled the U.S. to document his upcoming book Abandoned Asylums. Most of the locations featured are still in fairly pristine states because entry is restricted by the private or governmental owners of the properties. (more…)]]>Photographer Matt Van der Velde traveled the U.S. to document his upcoming book Abandoned Asylums. Most of the locations featured are still in fairly pristine states because entry is restricted by the private or governmental owners of the properties. (more…)]]>http://boingboing.net/2016/10/11/new-book-explores-abandoned-as.html/feed4487782Taschen's hefty New Deal Photography goes well beyond familiar Depression-era imageshttp://boingboing.net/2016/10/07/aschens-hefty-new-deal-photo.html
http://boingboing.net/2016/10/07/aschens-hefty-new-deal-photo.html#commentsFri, 07 Oct 2016 17:39:17 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=487173

If you purchase a copy of New Deal Photography: USA 1935-1943 by Peter Walther hoping to find iconic Farm Security Administration images, such as the migrant mother by Dorothea Lange or the father and his two sons running in a dust storm by Arthur Rothstein, you will not be disappointed. With almost 400 photographs filling its 608 pages, including numerous gems by Walker Evans, there’s plenty of room for the expected. But New Deal Photography goes well beyond these familiar images, powerful though they may be.

The book’s geographic organization forces us to consider Depression-era life in the Northeast and South, too, pushing our perspectives beyond the more familiar locations of Oklahoma and California. In addition, Walther’s collection of images features numerous color photographs by Russell Lee, Jon Collier, and Marion Post Wolcott. Again, we are used to seeing the era depicted in black and white, but seeing it in color confounds many of our expectations about what rural America actually looked like during those desperate years.

Walther’s essay for the book, which is printed in English, German, and French, presents a brisk but useful overview of the Farm Security Administration, from its founding mission to relocate Dust Bowl farmers in Oklahoma to greener pastures, to the photographs that were initially commissioned to document the relocation process. That might have been all the FSA did, but Walther introduces us to an FSA economist named Roy Stryker, who understood that photographs would do a much better job of telling the story of rural America in the late 1930s than any economic report ever could.

And Stryker didn’t just hire photographers to take the FSA’s pictures – he also hired artists, which is why painters like Ben Shahn were given Leica cameras and sent into the heartland of America. In the end, more than 10,000 photographs were shot, printed, and captioned, but there could have been a great many more. Apparently, Stryker punched holes in as many as 100,000 negatives he deemed unsuitable for the FSA’s collection, which means Walther’s New Deal Photography could have been even bigger.
– Ben Marks

If you purchase a copy of New Deal Photography: USA 1935-1943 by Peter Walther hoping to find iconic Farm Security Administration images, such as the migrant mother by Dorothea Lange or the father and his two sons running in a dust storm by Arthur Rothstein, you will not be disappointed. With almost 400 photographs filling its 608 pages, including numerous gems by Walker Evans, there’s plenty of room for the expected. But New Deal Photography goes well beyond these familiar images, powerful though they may be.

The book’s geographic organization forces us to consider Depression-era life in the Northeast and South, too, pushing our perspectives beyond the more familiar locations of Oklahoma and California. In addition, Walther’s collection of images features numerous color photographs by Russell Lee, Jon Collier, and Marion Post Wolcott. Again, we are used to seeing the era depicted in black and white, but seeing it in color confounds many of our expectations about what rural America actually looked like during those desperate years.

Walther’s essay for the book, which is printed in English, German, and French, presents a brisk but useful overview of the Farm Security Administration, from its founding mission to relocate Dust Bowl farmers in Oklahoma to greener pastures, to the photographs that were initially commissioned to document the relocation process. That might have been all the FSA did, but Walther introduces us to an FSA economist named Roy Stryker, who understood that photographs would do a much better job of telling the story of rural America in the late 1930s than any economic report ever could.

And Stryker didn’t just hire photographers to take the FSA’s pictures – he also hired artists, which is why painters like Ben Shahn were given Leica cameras and sent into the heartland of America. In the end, more than 10,000 photographs were shot, printed, and captioned, but there could have been a great many more. Apparently, Stryker punched holes in as many as 100,000 negatives he deemed unsuitable for the FSA’s collection, which means Walther’s New Deal Photography could have been even bigger.
– Ben Marks

Like aurorae, sprites happen when charged particles interact with gases in the atmosphere, likely nitrogen. As ice particles high within thunderclouds bash against one another, an electrical charge builds. An opposite charge builds up on the ground, and eventually both charges connect, creating a spark of light—lightning. When the lightning strike has a positive charge, it can spark a sprite—a kind of electric field that shoots out from the top of the lightning strike—that flashes above the cloud.

They’re also not easily spotted by the human eye. As Matt Heavner of the University of Alaska explains, bright lights make it nearly impossible for the eye’s retina to spot the flashes, and the bright clouds that can surround them also distract would-be sprite spotters. It’s even more difficult to catch these flashes in action because when you’re beneath the sprite-sprouting cloud, you can’t see the flash at all. You either need to be flying above the clouds or far away to get the perfect shot.

Like aurorae, sprites happen when charged particles interact with gases in the atmosphere, likely nitrogen. As ice particles high within thunderclouds bash against one another, an electrical charge builds. An opposite charge builds up on the ground, and eventually both charges connect, creating a spark of light—lightning. When the lightning strike has a positive charge, it can spark a sprite—a kind of electric field that shoots out from the top of the lightning strike—that flashes above the cloud.

They’re also not easily spotted by the human eye. As Matt Heavner of the University of Alaska explains, bright lights make it nearly impossible for the eye’s retina to spot the flashes, and the bright clouds that can surround them also distract would-be sprite spotters. It’s even more difficult to catch these flashes in action because when you’re beneath the sprite-sprouting cloud, you can’t see the flash at all. You either need to be flying above the clouds or far away to get the perfect shot.

Beginning in 1951, the United States exploded atomic bombs at the Nevada Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Seen here are snapshots of the tests that, in many cases, illuminated the Los Angeles and Las Vegas skies with a nuclear dawn. More at Amusing Planet.

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Beginning in 1951, the United States exploded atomic bombs at the Nevada Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Seen here are snapshots of the tests that, in many cases, illuminated the Los Angeles and Las Vegas skies with a nuclear dawn. More at Amusing Planet.

Scott London, a longtime burner and photographer (see his 2014 photo book, Burning Man: Art on Fire), produced an amazing set of portraits of art cars -- "mutant vehicles" -- from this year's event, including Maria Del Camino (previously), a flying El Camino/tank hybrid that lives in Liminal Labs, where I camp with its creator, the amazing Bruce Tomb.
(more…)

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Scott London, a longtime burner and photographer (see his 2014 photo book, Burning Man: Art on Fire), produced an amazing set of portraits of art cars -- "mutant vehicles" -- from this year's event, including Maria Del Camino (previously), a flying El Camino/tank hybrid that lives in Liminal Labs, where I camp with its creator, the amazing Bruce Tomb.
(more…)

Brace yourself for a level of cuteness that could have lasting effects. Zoo Portraits by Barcelona-based Yago Partal include interesting information about each species. That cute otter could grow to 99 pounds, the heaviest of the weasel family. (more…)

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Brace yourself for a level of cuteness that could have lasting effects. Zoo Portraits by Barcelona-based Yago Partal include interesting information about each species. That cute otter could grow to 99 pounds, the heaviest of the weasel family. (more…)